


Violins: A Guide For The Sherlock Fandom

by gelishan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelishan/pseuds/gelishan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violins are stupidly complicated to play well.  That’s probably why Sherlock likes them--well, that and because he can annoy the heck out of Mycroft by playing deliberately badly.  Luckily, Sherlock fandom, you do not actually have to learn to play the violin!  This guide will help you convince your readers that Sherlock knows how to play the violin without requiring you to endure years of violin teachers shouting at you for tiny details of your technique.  ("Stop avoiding the frog!  Bow parallel to the bridge!")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violins: A Guide For The Sherlock Fandom

When I was about seven years old, my friend gave me a comic strip she’d clipped out of a local newspaper. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the strip online anywhere, but clearly she’d thought it was hilarious enough to share with me. I, on the other hand, thought, “Wow, that sheet music only has three lines in the staff, and the musical notes do not follow any meter, and the barlines extend like halfway through the page, _what the heck is this?_ ”

And that, my friends, was my first training for becoming a humourless feminist.

(No, I’m kidding. Feminists are _hilarious_. I love you, Sarah Haskins and Sady Fucking Doyle.)

But that’s what I’ve always been like. I get fidgety when people are saying things that I know are factually incorrect, and I adore giving people tools they can use to make awesome things even awesomer. Those are two of the biggest reasons I beta-read so much, and those, plus my love of writing, music, Sherlock, and fandom people in general, are the biggest reasons I decided to write this guide. (The other reason is that _working in a call centre is really boring you guys._ )

Violins are stupidly complicated to play well. That’s probably why Sherlock likes them--well, that and because he can annoy the heck out of Mycroft by playing deliberately badly. Luckily, Sherlock fandom, you do not actually have to learn to play the violin! This guide will help you convince your readers that Sherlock knows how to play the violin without requiring you to endure years of violin teachers shouting at you for tiny details of your technique. ("Stop avoiding the frog! Bow parallel to the bridge!")

If you do want tiny, fiddly details about violin technique, pun entirely intended, please feel welcome to contact me. I’ve been playing the violin since I was four, and obviously, I am either older than four or a terrifying prodigy at sentence construction (and no matter what [Ivy Blossom](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/works) tells you, I am also older than seventeen). Equally obviously, I like telling people how stuff works. You might actually make my day by asking more questions.

 **  
Tools  
**

There are several items that any violinist will have besides a violin and a bow.

 **Case**  
Obvious, certainly, but what the heck, Sherlock always points out the obvious even while he laughs at you for not knowing it. (I am not laughing!) It has a violin-shaped hollow in it and some small compartments. Most good cases are square rather than violin-shaped because they protect the violin better and have more storage space for the other tools. Also useful for giving you a chance to make really stupid jokes about Sherlock’s current case.

 **Rosin**  
The violin makes a sound because of the friction of the bow hair against the violin strings. Beginning violinists have a tendency to press too hard, which partly explains why small children playing the violin usually sound like a cross between a yowling cat and a buzzsaw. (Thanks for being so patient with me, Dad!) The reason this is relevant is that horsehair, the material bow hair is made of, does not actually generate much friction when rubbing against metal strings. In order to get pretty sounds (or chainsaw yowling) out of the violin, you need to rub the hairs of the bow with something sticky but not too sticky: in this case, rosin.

Rosin either comes embedded in a little square box or is round and attached to a cloth, and the cloth-wrapped rosin is sometimes stored in a little plastic case. The round rosin is usually better quality, and unsurprisingly, it is the kind that Sherlock has in The Great Game. And because you need to rosin the bow (yes, that usually is the verb) before playing anything, you also need to clean between the fingerboard (the black thing along the neck of the violin that the violin strings run over) and the bridge with a soft cloth at the end of every practice session, otherwise you end up with an unpleasantly sticky violin and it is hard to shift between positions.

Between rosin buildup and inadvertently getting the oils from your fingers on your bow hair, you probably need to periodically bring your violin bow to a specialist to rehair it.

 **Shoulder Rest**  
So you have a chin rest on your violin, too, but it’s attached to the violin, so you usually don’t need to worry about it. The shoulder rest you need to put on at the beginning of every practice or performance session: it helps you hold your violin at a good angle and makes it easier to shift your fingers between positions. You also need to take it off at the end of every practice session, because otherwise, your violin will not fit in the case, and you will break it trying to close it.

There are some people who prefer to play without a shoulder rest. They can be very good musicians! But that is the exception, not the rule.

 **Mute**  
Not that important, but you probably have it anyway if you play the violin. It can be heavy or light: you put it on the bridge of a violin to muffle the sound. Used mostly for effect. I use a heavy mute to keep from bothering my neighbours in my apartment complex, though, so it _might_ be relevant, if you think Sherlock will ever have any reason to care what other people in the apartment complex think of his playing at all hours.

 **Humidifier**  
A long green rubber thing with holes on the outside and a sponge inside-- called a worm in the States and a humidifier in the UK. When the weather gets dry, you briefly soak it in water and snake it into the F-holes of a violin to keep the violin humid enough. If you manage to work this into a story as a relevant plot point, I will send you cookies, because that can’t possibly be an easy feat.

 **  
Anatomy  
**

Google ‘anatomy of a violin’ and click on the first link. Stare at the resulting image (not that one, the one _under_ the broken image.)

Got that? No? Me neither, actually: I have never heard of many of these violin parts and, like I said, I have been playing the violin since I was four. Most violinists will know what a bridge, F-hole, neck, fingerboard, peg (used to tune the violin), and scroll are, as those are the bits that are ever actually relevant. Sherlock would have deleted anything irrelevant.

Some violins also have fine-tuners by the bridge, but usually not good violins: experienced violinists usually only have a fine-tuner on the E string.

Do the same with the bow. (Note: you will have to Google ‘anatomy of a violin bow,’ as otherwise the first result is the anatomy of a bow you shoot arrows with, and I really hope Sherlock is not playing a violin with one of those. Though honestly, he probably has attempted that at least once while bored.)

The relevant bits of the bow are the tip, the frog, the stick, and the hair. You loosen and tighten the bow hair with a screw on the bottom. The bow needs to be tightened a fair bit to produce a sound, but not too much, otherwise you can’t do some stupid human tricks like ricochet the bow off the violin strings and also you might hurt the wood of the bow.

 **  
Cost  
**

A good violin is expensive. Really, really expensive. Probably thousands of pounds, at least.

 **  
Repertoire  
**

 **Popular Stuff**

There are a few pieces that everyone I’ve encountered who has ever learned violin is familiar with: off the top of my head, the Bach Double, unaccompanied Bach, Mendelssohn’s _Violin Concerto in E Minor_ , Kreisler's _Praeludium and Allegro_ , Vivaldi’s _Summer_ , Lalo’s _Sinfonie Espagnole_. I don’t know if Sherlock knows them. You decide.

Fun fact: Edouard Lalo owed much of his success as a composer to, and wrote the aforementioned _Sinfonie Espagnole_ for...

 **Pablo de Sarasate**

He was a virtuoso violinist from the turn of the century. According to my father, Sarasate began composing because he decided that none of the existing violin repertoire was good enough for his talent. That pretty much tells you about both his music and the limited recordings that exist of his performance: flashy (though without much substance), arrogant, at speeds that are exhilarating and leave you giggling breathlessly—especially if you know how to play the violin and know how much technical prowess you need to pull that stuff off.

In the Arthur Conan Doyle canon, Sherlock Holmes adored Sarasate, and he dragged John Watson along to see a concert in _The Red-Headed League_. That’s one of my favorite characterization details from the original canon: I hope the above summary explains why.

Sarasate’s most famous pieces are the _Carmen Fantasie_ (variations on famous themes from Bizet’s _Carmen_ ) and _Ziegunerweisen_. He wrote a number of other pieces.

 **Seduction**

So probably about 2/3 of you want to know what violin music is seductive, since Sherlock seducing John with his violin is kind of maybe a slightly popular trope. A little. Arthur Conan Doyle canon tie-in lovers: according to _A Study In Scarlet_ , one of John Watson’s favourite violin pieces is Mendelssohn’s _Lieder_. Those of you who don’t care about the literary canon as much: here are my halfhearted opinions!

There are different kinds of seductive. If you want sappy and overblown I would go for Tchaikovsky. If you want Srs Bzns, I would go for Brahms or Mendelssohn. If you want tortured romance, I would go for Kreisler’s _Praeludium and Allegro_ for its simplicity, fame, and passion, or Schumann on the principle of his life. If you want “I will seduce you with my ridiculous and shallow technical skill,” I would go for Wieniawski, Paganini, or the aforementioned Sarasate. You are totally encouraged to disagree with any of this.

 **Other**

OK, so this part is just self-indulgent, and you can skip it if you like. But here are some brief summaries of the character of a few different famous composers’ work, should you find it useful for setting moods. I also have opinions about how Sherlock would feel about the music of various different time periods, but I think that might be a little too much for a tutorial.

 _Beethoven:_ He was an innovator who liked messing with the heads of his audiences: he took traditional forms and tonalities and stuck things in that audiences of the time would never expect. He also liked giant flashy things. Mozart once called him a “ham-fisted German.”

 _Brahms_ : He did not play the violin, so a lot of his violin music is melodically simple but really challenging to play. He also meandered a lot, which I am not sure if Sherlock would like or hate.

 _Mozart:_ I think Sherlock would find Mozart boring. His music is very simple to play technically and the chord changes are predictable. The trick to playing Mozart well is playing his music with refinement, which I think is something Sherlock is far too impatient to attempt and something that’s more Mycroft’s bag anyway. Your mileage may vary.

 _Saint-Saens_ : Very transparent harmony: you can hear each individual part at any time. Not very predictable (except for Carnival of the Animals. Everyone knows Carnival of the Animals).

 _Schoenberg_ : Father of atonal music. If you make Sherlock play this stuff unless he’s doing it to really really bother someone, I disown you. On the other hand, if you make Sherlock play this stuff to really bother someone, or mention Sherlock hating it, let me know so I can give you the biggest hug available online.

  
 **Technique**  


Or, a brief lesson in miscellaneous ways to not make me cry.

You don’t grip the bow in a fist. You have a specific bowhold.

Violin strings, bow hair. Please do not mix these up, it is confusing.

Don’t have someone run their fingers sensuously along the bow. It will get oil all over the violin hair, which will make the bow not work.

Never drop the violin. It will break.

 **  
  
 **What does John know about all this?**  
  
**

John is almost certainly spectacularly ignorant about solo violin repertoire, but canonically, he knows how to play the clarinet (really! Rewatch The Blind Banker if you don’t believe me. Hopefully the prospect of having to rewatch that episode makes you believe me), so he probably knows something about music, maybe what composers he likes, possibly even how to read sheet music. In terms of general knowledge, it would depend on _where_ your John learned to play the clarinet. If John learned from being in orchestra, he probably at least knows what things like rosin are, and what a violin case looks like, though if it was school orchestra, he might not be familiar with good-quality versions of those. If he learned elsewhere, he probably doesn’t know anything at all. You decide.

\---

That’s pretty much all I have to say about violins in Sherlock fandom. If you have any questions about any of this: make my day!

 **[edit 6/21]** However, that is not all my readers had to say about the violin: for some more really useful information, look at Dani's comment below. (Actually, look at the comments in general-- yes, I know it's the opposite of the usual rule of the internet! But there's a lot of information in them. You guys are awesome.) 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Hayley](http://misanthropyray.livejournal.com) for the Britpick, to [Mendeia](http://mendeia.livejournal.com) for Mendelssohn’s _Lieder_ , and to my brother for pointing out that some people do not use shoulder rests.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Instruments of Destruction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/260569) by [seiji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seiji/pseuds/seiji)




End file.
